


I Can't Hold Back, I'm On The Edge

by orphan_account



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Character Study, Dirty Talk, E-mail, Flirting, M/M, Music, Naughty, New England, Pining, Pop Culture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-06-08
Updated: 2011-06-08
Packaged: 2017-10-20 06:07:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,181
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/209569
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There are two pairings in this fic, actually: Arthur/Eames and Arthur/Providence, Rhode Island.</p><p>Arthur is the sort of person who's never had a problem going after what he wants. And right now he wants Eames with him, however briefly, in the city closest to his heart. So he decides to try to persuade him by doing something he does very well: making lists of facts.</p><p>Written for <a href="http://inception-kink.livejournal.com/18462.html?thread=43321630#t43321630">this</a> kink meme prompt, and generally inspired by the idea of Non-Killbot!Arthur.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Can't Hold Back, I'm On The Edge

**Author's Note:**

> Title from "I Can't Hold Back" by Survivor.
> 
> I can't stop titling things after songs. I'm just like Degrassi: The Next Generation.
> 
> Also, I SWEAR my next fic will not be Arthur-centric. Swear it.

It was three in the morning, and he’d already listened through that stubbornly untitled playlist--actually titled PLAYLIST X--three times. It was the one that included lots of the sort of songs he’d never actually admit to owning, such as “Nights in White Satin” by The Moody Blues, “An Innocent Man” by Billy Joel, and “Freedom” by Wham! (Not the one with all the supermodels and the black and white video—the one with the lyrics that went “I don’t want your freedom…etc., etc., etc.,...all I want right now is you.”)

Actually, he was tempted just to copy the lyrics to that song into the body of the email, and send them and nothing else. That would’ve solved a lot of his problems.

Saturday night in Federal Hill was always bright and noisy. He’d tried to get some work done, but it felt wrong being cloistered in his apartment when there were so many people walking under his window. On dates, a lot of them. People bonding in trying to figure out the crosswalks, men stepping on the impractical fringe of their girlfriends’ high heels. People who were at least attempting to make their intentions known to the objects of their desires, whether that intention was _I like talking to you_ or _Let’s stay married_ or _I want to fuck you so hard we make the neighbors’ bed jump._ He felt like a sap for thinking that much into it, but that was one of Arthur’s secrets—he often felt like a sap.

And he’d never been this fucking reticent in pursuing what he wanted, either. He remembered being six, trying to use one of his mother’s calligraphy pens to write a note to a boy named Josh asking him to meet him by the playground slide. He’d been ready to deliver it, even asking his mother for an envelope and stamp (even though Josh was in his class.) “What do you need a stamp for, hon?” his mother had asked. Somehow he’d ended up showing her the note; she’d smiled softly, and said, “Oh, love, you can’t give him this. It’s very sweet, but he might not understand.”

He’d never quite taken that lesson to heart. He usually waited at least to make quite sure the person he was pursuing, of either gender, was interested in men. And he had his pride; he didn’t press the issue, and he knew how to walk away gracefully, and he never never asked for anything twice, but other than that, it was all systems go. Until he met Eames.

Eames threw him way off. Eames had this way of making him feel like a silly little kid who’d forgotten that he was still just a ten-year-old hall safety in an orange badge. And yes, he’d been one, and yes, he did enjoy telling people not to run in the hallways. But he wished Eames would understand that that wasn’t all.

 _-I know you have absolutely no reason to come to Providence, RI,_

he started typing.

No, no. Deletedeletedelete. It wasn't good to start out with the argument against yourself. People were suggestible, and they had a nasty habit of making their final judgements before the first sentence of anything was through. Eames appeared to be a first-sentence judger.

They'd gotten off to a bad start, and it just kept snowballing. In a casualish group conversation before their first job extraction job together, one involving a maker of imitation Ferraris, Eames had made the mistake of referring to Saab as a Swiss auto manufacturer.

"Saab is Swedish," Arthur had pointed out. He immediately winced. He hated when he got all pedantic; he just always instinctively assumed that people took pleasure in receiving new tidbits of information.  
And Eames had paused, raised an eyebrow, and given him a glacial smile.

"Thank you so much for that, Arthur. I would've completely blown this job for everyone if I didn't know that."

And so Eames would always make jokes about his nitpicking and his large store of trivial knowledge and the fact that all his books and files fairly bristled with tape flags (Eames had once introduced him to a chemist as "Arthur Szymanowski, 3M Heir.")

Maybe Eames was just kind of an asshole.

But he wasn't an asshole to everyone. And he was only gently an asshole to Arthur, if that made sense. Still, Arthur felt like maybe he wasn't worth listening to Bryan Ferry's "Slave To Love" at 3 in the morning for.

As Woody Allen said, though, the heart wants what it wants.

*

He went back to his email draft. His empty, empty email draft.

He didn't even know if Eames still used this address. But he figured it was worth a try.

 _Any desire to see H.P. Lovecraft's house?_

No, no, no.

Hmm.

Maybe he should just play upon his strengths.

\---

From: Arthur Szymanowski a.szymanowski@ecourier.net  
To: Alexander Eames ae2356234@mail.ru _Why the hell did he have a Russian addr...oh, never mind._  
Subject: pedantry

Facts about Providence, Rhode Island:  
-Population of 178,042  
-The local accent is non-rhotic  
-Founded by Roger Williams in 1636  
-Home to the fourth oldest library in the country  
-Notable residents past and present include horror writer H.P. Lovecraft, novelist Cormac McCarthy, and Arthur Szymanowski, who listens to Bryan Ferry and chews the ends of his pens while thinking about your beautiful mouth.

\---

 _And--send._

 

Well, he thought, that was either the creepiest or the most amazing thing he'd ever done.  
And he routinely broke into peoples' minds.

*

 _Well, what the hell did you expect,_ Arthur asked himself. He should’ve known it would be silly to expect that Eames would return his feelings. He was a kid from New England who still secretly read epic fantasy novels and wore his fantasies of being Clint Eastwood on his sleeve. No one ever really picked up on that, fortunately or unfortunately; they always thought he was trying to look like a fastidious businessman. But he was really sort of going for a look like Dirty Harry, or Clyde Barrow, or an old west gunslinger. And he really didn’t mind getting his knees dirty, either.

For Eames, he thought, he’d be willing to get his knees dirty all the fucking time.

After the Fischer job he had the money to travel, to try to forget Eames with champagne and sailing and pretty men (Somerset Maugham had said something to the effect of “Love is a bad sailor,” and it was probably somewhat true). But he’d wanted to stay in Providence for awhile, where he’d gone to school, where he’d sat in the Providence Athenaeum for hours reading and feeling far too old to be this committed to turning fictions into realities. He had this idea that eventually he’d have to give it up and live like the rich motherfucker he was—and he enjoyed that sometimes, to be sure—but not quite yet.

And there was cognitive dissonance. He was a criminal. He’d done some pretty ethically questionable things in his life, and had seen some very dark things in peoples’ minds. But here he felt safe, able to split off from that work-self (hard, dark, enameled) for a time and get back into buying tomatoes and walking around College Hill at dusk looking at the gates and doors and stone mythical creatures on the colonial houses; able to pick that self back up in another town when he needed to. Hardness wasn’t a good sailor either, apparently. At least not for now.

 

*

Heart’s “What About Love” had just come on (real heavy schmaltz-artillery, that one), and Arthur was about to deploy email number two.

\---

From: Arthur Szymanowski a.szymanowski@ecourier.net  
To: Alexander Eames ae2356234@mail.ru  
Subject: introductions

Dear Alexander:

We’ve worked together several times now, but I still don’t feel I know you as well as I’d like to. I apologize for whatever part I had in that, and I’d like to right it, if it isn’t too late.

Here are some things you may not know about me.

-My files are perfectly organized, but my closet is sometimes kind of a fucking mess.  
-I didn’t learn to swim until I was sixteen.  
-In the summer I eat two or three raw tomatoes a day, like apples.  
-I read the horoscope whenever I get the newspaper. (I'm an Aries.)  
-I read yours too.  
-Yes, I know your birthday. There’s a reason they say I’m the best in the business.  
-I was on my high school’s archery team. I was good, but I wasn’t the best at that.  
-When I was fifteen I wrote an unfinished novel about a kid who dies and gets trapped inside a computer and then falls in love with a hacker.  
-I’d really like to take you out to dinner. I don’t know if that’s too mundane for you, and/or if I’m too frivolous and inexperienced and American and I don’t know what. But for my part, I’d love to sit across from you and just listen to you talk.

Regards,  
Arthur

\---

So much for never asking twice.

*

Another week, two weeks.

All he could think about was Eames laughing at him. Of him saying, _seriously, this kid thinks all this stuff is interesting? I could have guessed most of it, but I never really cared._ He regretted sending any of it. And he'd never before regretted going after something he wanted.

 _Why is this one guy, this one fucking jerk, so important? I barely know him. He won't let himself be known._

He'd stopped listening to Playlist X. He wandered listlessly around town, walking back and forth down the same student-glutted streets, starting to wish he really were somewhere else. Next week, maybe Singapore. Or Istanbul. New cities were exhilarations he was guaranteed, that couldn't ignore him. Buildings couldn't brick their windows up as he walked down the street.

Maybe he was just too used to getting what he wanted. That was certainly possible.

*

He was packing for Istanbul. There was a new Neal Stephenson he was looking forward to reading on the plane; most of the time he never understood people complaining about time in transit.

He looked at his socks and ties and underwear laid out on the bed. Impulsively he grabbed a balled pair of socks, unballed it, and rolled it up meticulously, momentarily overplaying the role of the neat freak Eames always thought he was.

There was no reason for the doorbell to be ringing at that hour, so he ignored it and aggressively bundled another few pairs of socks. It kept ringing.

 _Well, maybe it's a god in disguise. Or a disgruntled former client with a score to settle. Better face it, at least._

It was neither.

"Hello, Arthur," Eames said, looking somewhat tired and drawn, but beautiful as ever.

"This is...fairly unexpected," Arthur replied. "Can I ask what brings you here?"

Eames took a while to answer.

"Figured I'd take you up on your invitation to dinner. It was only polite."

Arthur nodded, a lump forming in his throat.

He knew better than to ask how Eames had found where he lived; it wasn't nearly as difficult as, for example, finding Eames.

There was an uncomfortable silence.

"Arthur, I--I mean, it's just--there's--" Eames was not usually one for false starts. Or for sentences that didn't say anything at all.

"Why don't we narrow this down to one issue at a time, hm? So first of all, me kissing you--yes or no."

Eames looked startled, then looked down at the beds of his fingernails, rubbing at something there.

"Y-yes." He cleared his throat. "Very much yes."

Arthur deftly leaned in, touching his lips to Eames's softly but resolutely, a difficult ache forming in his chest that, he felt, could be cured either by screaming and smashing antiques or by enfolding the man in his arms and worshipping his mouth with his own lips and teeth and tongue and breath. When he had kissed Ariadne in the dream, it had been a similar kiss, in terms of physics, but he didn't feel like his body was being rearranged from the inside like heavy furniture in a tilting room.

After a few seconds, Eames drew back, and sized him up with an unreadable expression.

"So?" Arthur asked, "Is that that, then?"

If Arthur didn't know much better, he would have sworn that Eames looked like he was about to cry. But that look was gone so fast that it might well never have happened, washed away by the nictitating membrane of his usual airy calm.

Arthur was frustrated. Tired.

"You keep looking at me like I should be saying something, but I don't...I feel like I've said so much. Maybe too much. I wish you'd give me some idea where I stand." He drew a breath. "Do you feel anything at all, about--this? Did you come here for a reason, or just to fuck with me, or because you're on the run and here was as good as anywhere? I'm not trying to make this seem like more than it is for me, don't get me wrong. I don't have any deep, scary feelings for you yet, if that's what you're afraid of. I just want to know who the hell you are. And kiss you. A lot." He ran his hand through his hair, feeling like he must be visibly shaking.

Still calm, Eames stepped back towards Arthur and put his palm to Arthur's cheek.

"You're terrifying," Eames said, almost a whisper. "That's what I think."

"That same old thing, huh?" Arthur said wearily. "Still can't get past the suits and the hair? Still think I'm one bad laundry experience away from becoming Patrick Bateman writ enormous?"

"No, I could always get past that," he replied softly. "That's what’s terrifying. How fucking sweet and lovely you are." He swallowed. "How I have no idea how to deal with it when all of that sweetness and loveliness is turned on me full force."

"Then I'll stop." He began to turn away.

"No. Please don't." He kissed Arthur gently. "It's the best thing that's happened to me in a long time."

Arthur slid his arms around Eames, breathing in a hint of leafy cologne, unable to breathe it deeply enough in.

"I'm not a good guy, Arthur," he mumbled into Arthur's shoulder. "You have to know that. I'm not like you, didn’t become a thief to help out a desperate buddy. I started because I was a bored rich kid who finally found something he was good at. And then I couldn’t stop.” He raised his head to look Arthur in the eye. “God, you know, you have such beautiful eyes. Anyway. It was so addicting, having my own sphere of influence, my expertise. After having been mostly decorative for so long. So I didn’t take too kindly to anyone trying to piss on my territory…is that even the right metaphor? Fuck it. I thought, this kid’s been told his whole life he’s smart, and he fucking knows it, and he’s just gonna think I’m some idiot hired muscle he can push around.”

“I never thought that,” Arthur whispered into Eames’s cheek. “I thought you were astonishing. You basically invented dream forging as we know it. I felt like a Baby’s First Laptop compared to you.”

“See what I mean about the sweetness?” Eames laughed. “It’s deadly. Far deadlier even than you with an assault rifle—and by the way, the way you look with that thing has a very large fan base in my trousers.” He nipped Arthur’s cheek playfully.

“And I thought I was the creep here,” Arthur grinned. “God, but you’re beautiful. I’d let you get away with so much. You wanna know what scares me? That does.”

Eames bent down and pressed a kiss to the dip in Arthur’s collarbone.

“I have to say. I can’t promise you anything. I’m a fucking basket case, Arthur. I hide it well, but there’s something cold and prickly and huge as fuck in me, and it’s been my friend and mentor for many years. But I’ll try.” He kissed the pulse in Arthur's throat, then his forehead; he wrapped his arm around Arthur’s shoulders, pulling him so close Arthur felt in in his lungs. “I’ll try to give you some sweetness back. Tonight I want to lie in bed with you and talk to you for a long time. And then I want to see what’s going on with this lovely body.” He pulled Arthur’s unbuttoned shirt collar aside, placed another kiss where his neck met the collar of his undershirt. “I want to suck your nipples through your T-shirt. I want to kiss all over your cock till you’re begging to fuck my mouth, and then I’ll take you in my mouth so gently it bloody makes you want to cry. I want to tease your pretty arse with a vibrator, then eat you out, deep and wet and slow, have you face down in the pillows weeping with joy. I’ve been wanking to the thought of that for years,” he exhaled. “Years, Arthur.”

“Me too,” Arthur confessed.

"No you haven't," Eames deadpanned. "Americans don't _wank_. They what, jock off? Jack off?"

"Ha ha ha," Arthur groaned. "But I’ve been fucking needing to finger your arse. Yes, I said _arse_. Hold you close with one arm, while I put my mouth all over your chest and your neck and your stomach and talk to you and tell you how gorgeous and tight and good you are for me while I fuck you with my fingers as if it were, like, the arse equivalent of a goddamn last meal.”

“You’re going to make me come in my pants just from talking, you know that?”

“Is that even possible?”

“You of all people should know,” Eames teased.

“Alexander. Fuck.”

“You know, most of the people who care that I have a first name call me Sasha,” he explained, kissing Arthur’s ear. “Russian mother.”

“Mmm. Sasha. You speak Russian?”

“ _Nemnozhko._ ”

“I want you to teach me everything you know,” Arthur said earnestly. “Sasha.”

“Trust me, you don’t want to know some of the things I know,” he said, somewhat sadly.

 

**

 

Arthur wrapped his arms around Eames and held him tightly. Istanbul briefly crossed his mind. But he’d unroll his socks. He’d sweep the suitcases and clothes off the bed, lay Eames down gently, and touch him until he came and then again, in different ways, until he slept. It would be sweet and lovely. Maybe this was the only time it would ever be like that. But he had to give Eames some of his comfort, some of his love for this city and this time in his life and maybe even his love for himself (the bright joy he took in the kind of person, open and fearless, he’d always been). He didn’t hold back; that was who he was. That was what kept him.

**Author's Note:**

> * _Nemnozhko_ (немножко) in Russian means "not much/a little".


End file.
